"Why is having a call to action so important for my SEO campaign? Shouldn't I just be concentrating on high rankings?"
Susan Alexander

These days things happen fast. The internet has bought about a mentality of instant access, instant information and instant gratification. It's so easy to go to another website or do another search for a product, service or information.

With this in mind we need to make our websites usable and easy to manage, navigate and fulfill whatever action your potential customer wants to fill when they get to your website.

Whenever I speak at a conference or workshop I always tell people that ranking a website is only half the battle of SEO. The other battle is converting people when you get to your website. IF you concentrate on getting your website ranked and forget to guide people through to an end result, your website won't be performing as well as it could be.

What is a call to action?
Basically a call to action is an instruction such as:-

• call now
• click here
• buy today
• add to cart

You get the idea. When it comes to SEO there are a few areas you want to place a good defined call to action:-

Title tags
Whilst I would argue that this isn't a direct call to action in the sense that you might not actually tell people to click, call or email etc, the title tag holds a lot of weight in getting the attention of your potential customers.

A great title tag should be relevant and give a benefit to your customers. For example, the SEOhub homepage title tag is:-
'SEOhub - Online SEO Learning Centre and SEO Training'

I wanted to get across that this website is all about learning about SEO online and can be used as a training website.

Description tags
This is probably the most important area where you want to have a call to action from an SEO perspective. The description tag is what gets displays in the search engines so you have an opportunity to engage your customers using your description tags.

To give you an example of a call to action the SEOhub homepage description tag is:-
'Learning SEO is easy with SEOhub. Register FREE and receive a 45 page e-book about SEO and online marketing.'

So lets break that down a little...
The first thing I describe is what the site is about and a benefit to the user. It's about learning SEO and this website makes it easy. People who register also get something for free - my e-book. So I have what the site's about, an offer, and the call to action is to register so that I'm able to send you further communications in the future and hopefully you might require my services at some stage in the future.

If you're in the type of business that people want to jump on the phone and talk to you, make sure you put your phone number in the description tags of your website. This will enable people to give you a call right from the search engines results page. They don't even have to go to your website to contact you!

On your website
The next area to have a call to action is somewhere on your website. This will really depend on what type of action you're trying to get your customers to perform and how you want to approach it. Some people like the in-your-face model with a pop-up subscription facility and really large button, others (like me) tend to take a more moderated approach and let customers decide for themselves (personally, I think this gives you a better quality of customer).

Different types of call to actions
There are many different types of call to actions and this really comes back to basic sales training. Different people respond to different offers, for example "50% off" and "half price" are essentially the same offer but some people will respond more to one type of offer over another (which is why it's so important to test offers to see which one gets the best conversions). That said, here's a few different types of calls to action you may wish to choose:-

Timed offer
The timed offer can work very well in creating a sense of urgency, meaning that if people don't order or sign up now they might miss out. Basically you would write something like "This offer only on until 5pm Tuesday" or something similar. One very effective technique I have seen is on the Net Registry homepage. When you go there a little countdown clock tells you 'your special offer ends in 1:49:58'. This gives the impression that for the next two hours you can get a great bargain, where in fact this counter shows every time you go to their website. Pretty smart, hey?

The "in your face" approach
This is where you would have a big red button that's very much 'in your face' telling people to buy now or download this e-book, etc.

Limited amount to first customers
This offer is only available to the first 50, 100, 1000 customers. Whatever number you choose it will create an environment that makes people think "If I get in quick enough I could get one of those".

Bonus offers
This is where you add something onto the original product or subscription. For example, "order today and receive a free XXX".

Reduction in price
There are so many variations of this theme it's almost limitless. For example:-

• 50% off
• 2 for 1
• half price
• buy one, get one free

These are just a few to get you started. Try some different variations of these, test them, improve them and you're well on your way to converting more customers.